The idea of trying Nicorette has always appealed to me. I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, but I’ve always wanted to try nicotine gum. For a while in high school, I plotted with one of my delinquent friends to see what would happen if we put nicotine patches all down our arms, chewed Nicorette and smoked three cigarette all at the same time. Nevertheless, due to lack of initiative and courage, this little stunt never came to fruition.

So, at the new place, I’ve been watching a jubilant young coder from New Zealand named Jonathan Gifford fight off his bad smoking urges using Nicorette. Feeling my oats, I asked him for a hit after lunch today. He obliged and broke a piece of the nicotine-laced confectionery off the blister pack, adding “knock yourself out, kid”. I unwrapped the gum and started chewing . Mmmmm, minty! Jon then started on about “seating” the gum between my lips and my gums for a while, chewing and then reseating. I did this for about thirty minutes or so, it had no effect on me whatsoever. Around this time, Jon let Jochen, the spry German CTO of the company, in on my experiment. Jochen warned me that this wasn’t going to turn out well. I scoffed, “Nicotine is just like caffeine, THEY’RE BOTH AMINES!”. He shot back, “So is strychnine!”. This blew my mind.

One hour into the ordeal I had to fax a letter. I got up off my chair, but felt rather light-headed and stumbled. No one noticed though. As I was walking, I started to sweat more profusely than George W. Bush at a math test. Then, I felt the familiar pre-heave, just-stepped-off-the-merry-go-round loss of equilibrium. I bee-lined for the bathroom and hid out there for about twenty minutes hoping that this episode would subside quickly. It didn’t. I stumbled back to my desk, with Jochen quipping, “you look green, man!” He and Jon were both laughing at me as I resorted to using one of my running towels to soak up the gallons of perspiration leaking from my pores. This was my body’s way of punishing me for being retarded.

After about 10-minutes of being berated, I made a second trip to the bathroom and donated about $20 worth of Henry’s Hunan to the big white telephone. One month in San Francisco and I’m already tossing my cookies on the 16th floor of a skyscraper in the financial district. How far I’ve fallen. I waited for over a year before heaving-on-the-clock at IBM. Finally, I declared defeat, left the bathroom, picked up my Macbook and what little dignity I had left, and headed home. Later on, the CEO got wind of my calamity and sent an email that read, “I know you are interested in having life experiences, but come on!!”.